Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
John Masters - a forgotten genius, 24 April 2005
John Masters is a forgotten author in many ways, which is a real shame as his writing is wonderful. He was a career army officer and many of his novels use his experiences of army life as a basis. He has a fantastic appreciation and understanding of the difficulties of life for locals and those serving in the army. His books are primarily based around army life and even if you are not a military fan, don't let this put you off. A number of novels have India as the location from the time just before the mutiny until after independence. They are brilliantly written and follow the trials and tribulations of an army family whose name is Savage. They are fiction based on fact and are very exciting reading.I first came across John Masters when in my teens - some thirty+ years ago, I was completely enthralled. Sadly, many of his books are no longer in print, which is a real shame. Those still in print are primarily classed as military and recall his personal experiences of army life. But novels such as Nightrunners of Bengal, Bhowani Junction and The Deceivers, are fiction using actual events as a basis and I can highly recommend them - if you can manage to find them!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forgotten classic, 1 Oct 2006
In no other book I know does the sheer arousal a woman's physical presence can evoke seem so real to the reader and so potent a force in men's motives. As two men from different communities compete for her affections, both of them at times selfishly & selflessly, it appears almost as if the Anglo-Indian heroine's sexual aura plays a larger part in this small scene in India's struggle for independence than politics could ever have done. The political outcome of the story is (from Masters' viewpoint of an ex British army officer, but perhaps not according to modern PC Standards) satisfactory, but the personal conclusions leave one aching for a world in which people are in control of their own destinies. The writing is clearly 1950's but none the worse for that - who can name three modern authors with the ability to get inside a character and inside your head using simple words & pleasingly correct grammar?
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Railway People, 11 May 2008
On the face of it, this is a ripping yarn, based around the efforts of the British at the end of the Raj to both recapture an escaped terrorist and keep a lid on the simmering unrest in the fictional railway town of Bhowani.
It is, however, much more than that: it is, in several ways, a remarkable book. Firstly, Masters writes it in three distinct voices: those of Victoria ('a chee-chee engine driver's daughter'), Rodney (a British officer) and Patrick, a railway administrator. Without in any way mangling English grammar or English spelling, Masters has ensured that when Patrick speaks the Eurasian accent is right in your ear: he has its rhythm absolutely nailed. Secondly, it subverts the whole ripping yarn genre. I don't want to say too much here, as that would spoil the story, but it doesn't end quite as you would expect it to and all along the way there are characters who are just not as they first appear: the most senior local civil servant is, it transpires, probably from the lowest of the Hindu castes; Rodney, very British and very correct and very arrogant, is quite disenchanted with the other Europeans and goes drinking in the Railway Institute where the Eurasians hang out. It's hard for us to picture now just how radical this was sixty-odd years ago in the dog days of the Empire, when Asians and Eurasians were not permitted membership of the exclusive clubs and European men who married Asian or mixed-race women could lose their jobs as a consequence.
Thirdly, and most remarkably, this novel is in a large part told from the viewpoint of the Anglo-Indian - the mixed race - community, and as a group, they are examined with a sympathy and compassion they do not, in literature, normally receive. Masters locates them right in their main employment - 'railway man' was a way of saying 'Anglo-Indian' - and fingers their hang-ups and their worries and their uncertainty of their place in the future India. He was himself of partly Indian ancestry and I wonder if his sympathy for them was aroused by this, or by straightforward human curiosity and kindness.
So it's a very good book. It is not, though, great literature: the style lacks the subtlety of, say, E.M Forster (who also took a good look at the Raj). Besides, I wasn't very impressed that Victoria's journey of self-discovery was entirely described through her relationships with men (it is also worth noting that the Anglo-Indian community went ballistic when this book was published, regarding Victoria as 'loose' and not at all the sort of young woman their community preferred to produce).
Even so, it is well worth reading. Some of the characterisation is outstanding (Patrick clunks moodily about the book, now sulking in the background, now grumbling in the foreground); the story hammers along at a fair old pace, with some wonderful touches of humour and the author's sympathy for his characters - for all he takes the mickey out of them - is evident on every page.
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by John Masters
by John Masters
by Stefan Zweig
